Helena Amaral – Fraternization 8
importance to everyone up and down the
corporate ladder, because our own existence
depended on two other people finding this
attraction. “[i]t’s significance is raised to the
highest power when the role it plays in the
welfare and survival of the species is considered.
For a species to survive, its members need to
find food, to avoid injury, to reproduce, and for
higher animals, to rear the young… As a
consequence, humans are among the most social
creatures in the animal kingdom, and our
evolutionary development has led to a hair-
trigger disposition for making discriminative
judgments along the attraction dimension”
(Lindzey & Aroson, 1985).
In the 1950s researchers believed that
opposites attract because they would
complement each other’s needs, but there is little
support for this proposition. Perceived similarity
instead seems to be a “much more important
criterion. Recent studies have consistently
found that higher perceptions of similarity are
associated with increased levels of relationship
quality” (Hogg & Cooper, 2003) (emphasis
added). Physical attractiveness and reciprocity
of liking are also factors of interpersonal
attraction.
Another factor is the exposure effect.
People have a tendency to marry people from
their own neighborhoods or workplaces, not
because of geographical proximity, but due to
“functional distance,” the extent to which they
cross each others’ paths. Individuals also place
an extremely high value on kindness, loyalty,
and emotional stability “because when we
entrust our psychological (and often physical)
welfare to another human being, it is important
that he or she poses no threat to our safety and
can be relied upon to act in a caring and
consistent fashion” (Hogg et al., 2003). As a
matter of fact, “the association between close
physical proximity and attraction is one of the
best documented within the attraction literature”
(Lindzey et al., 1985).
The workplace is an ideal setting because
not only is there constant exposure, but because
there is constant exposure, individuals are able
to carefully evaluate each other in a non-
threatening atmosphere. They learn who they
perceive to be similar in character, is kind, loyal
and emotionally stable. This is especially
difficult to learn on traditional dates when
everyone is in their best behavior at small and
separate intervals of time.
There is also documentation of professions
in which office romances are especially
common. For example, those who work in
hospitals, at newspaper offices, police stations
and law offices not only tend to spend long
hours together (the exposure factor), but also
work under intense circumstances where
employees depend on each other in situations
that have the potential for catastrophic
consequences. This has the effect of speeding
up the creation of interpersonal bonds. “You get
turned on by competence, by being a team that
wins, by being better together than separate.
That’s erotic and compelling” (Loftus, 1995).
It is important that employers acknowledge
this human dynamic at the workplace.
Employers are justified in wanting to ignore
human sexuality simply because it has nothing
to do with what the employees are getting paid
to do: work. Nevertheless, sexuality walks
through the front door of the workplace with
each and every employee. Most often it is not
romantic or visibly sexual in nature, and
manifests itself in socially acceptable forms: a
glance, a smile. It’s natural to be drawn to the
beauty of the opposite sex. However, sexuality
in the office can also be more expressive, and if
the attraction reciprocal, then romantic.
Employees are human first, professionals
second, but emotional intelligence facilitates the
balancing and cohabitation of the emotional with
the professional. “Emotional intelligence skills
refer to individual skills and competencies that
allow people to deal with their own emotions
and the emotions of others.” There is a trigger (a
particular event that has occurred), an emotional
response, and a behavioral response, if any
(Scholl, 2002). “The term encompasses the
following five characteristics and abilities: (1)
Self-awareness--knowing your emotions,
recognizing feelings as they occur, and
discriminating between them; (2) Mood
management--handling feelings so they're
relevant to the current situation and you react